


A Brief History of the Uselessness of Imagination

by Zafaria



Category: Wizard101
Genre: i write more than wiz stuff i swear, ijust thought this was a nice little tangent and i wanted to share it with you, welcome to my twister mind :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 08:10:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zafaria/pseuds/Zafaria
Summary: I think the most important thing I have learned from this is that the beserker swim fins look was really it, and I need to go back to it.





	A Brief History of the Uselessness of Imagination

     Here's the story: It is sophomore year, in the fall, and school has started but not quite picked up. Amidst the rush of assignments and exams and activities, the arrival of unforseen Darkmoor is made in Test Realm.  _A new world? Is it a world? What do we do? Why is it just dungeons?_

  
     It establishes as the hallmark of true endgamers quickly. Like a chattery, virulent sickness. Except, for show, instead of rashes and welts, there are tremendous spells and haunting gear.

  
     I finished Khrysalis recently, and I am ready to take on the challenge of the creepy green-glow manor. I find a team for the first section, the upper halls, and it's me and a fire, and maybe a life or a death. I can't remember the last place, but we go through fast, and we're spamming earthquakes and meteor strikes. The job gets done. 

  
     Then, to the Castle, where my first team expires rather ungloriously in the second battle. The run is a bust, and we scrap and try again, this time dividing out into new teams. A little mix-up would solve the problem, we figure. And it most certainly does, and we are dragged across the library into duels and then through to the entrance to the Graveyard. I pick up a new spell, another area-of-effect one, a big bug, a menace. I am ready to try it in flourish, grand fashion, striking down the mobs on the other side of the iron gate.

  
     I back out of the entrance area,and switch my realms into Ambrose area 1, the crowded realm. As all good solo players do, I wait in front of the sigil to be picked up by another team. Some of the better organized and prepared teams hop in. Thirty minutes later I am still standing by.

  
     "We need one more."

  
     "I can help," I type.

  
     They spin away from me towards other players. They call out another wizard's name and ignore my fading little bubble of text. They almost always prey on the Life wizards.

  
     And then two hours pass and I still sit patiently outside the sigil waiting for my turn. There is a team out there, I tell myself, with a Storm wizard to hit and a Life wizard to heal and a Death wizard to tank, and they can string me along as a placeholder, as the fourth slot in the battle so everyone feels a little more at ease and secure because there is a full team. These teams appear, and they need their fourth space filled and I volunteer, and they opt for the Balance wizard. Selfish Storm would only ever seek to be bladed. 

  
     "I have Storm Trap and Windstorm as item cards," I offer.

  
     "No thanks. We need Balance."

  
     And I continue to wait for the right team to come along, because eventually they will and they will need the Myth, to do Myth things, to shatter and cast the treasure card dispels and clean-up hit, and remove more shields, more shields, more shields.  
I am sitting for another few hours, and I pull up the friends window and glance at everyone's stats, who has the new gear and who doesn't, who's waiting for a team and who isn't, what is the Storm's critical rating and what is the Fire's. And I find in the crowd of people who set their characters to auto-spin that there is a handful of Myth wizards, and they do not spin, they sit at their keyboards, waiting for that perfect team, chatbox open, treasure cards lined up in the sideboards. It has been four hours. I have no idea what the inside of this dungeon looks like.

  
     Perhaps, now you see something very obvious that I, excited and relishing in the renewed sense of accomplishment and eagerness, did not. I was not wanted on a team. 

  
     And then there are more three-person teams.

  
     "We need one more."

  
     "I can help. I have Jade gear."

  
     "No."

  
     "We need one more."

  
     "I can tank, I have a resist pet and Jade gear."

  
     "No."

  
     "We need one more."

  
     "I can."

  
     "We need one more. Life or Balance, please."

  
     Over the hours, the phrase "I don't need a Myth" evolves into "I don't want a Myth".

  
     I crack open the secondary account, with the legendary Balance, who has been sitting in Celestia for months now. In a month, she is also a max level wizard. She is wanted for support.

   
     "I have a Myth too."

  
     "Oh. We have three already."

  
     "Okay, good luck then."

  
     Finally, I reach out to an old friend spurred to log on by the introduction of new challenge. He is a Life. The desirability of a Balance outweighs the undesirability of a Myth, and my Balance wizard is like taking along the worth of two people in exchange for one useful school. The Myth would be a deadweight that could be pulled strenuously through to the end. And now we have a team with a Life and a Balance, a team that any Storm or Fire wizard would be merry to be the centerpiece, the keystone of.  
At least the Myth can hold a spot in the duel circle.

  
     We clear the dungeon, I am somewhere else two foggy years later, farming Mirror Lake in haste for a set of boots, and I pull both my characters through because they work fluidly and as a team, double-hit the same round, heal, tank. "We" help some other wizards through and farm with others, and I think maybe I ward off that trickling sense of the uselessness of my first character. But then it pierces back again sometimes, intermittent, wailing.

  
     It is the small voice of a legendary wizard running Mirror Lake for the first time with my max-level Myth.

    
     "Usually, a high-level wizard ends up on your team," ..."but usually it is Storm. Myth cannot hit very well."

  
     I am the only max level in the three person run, and I flee and leave the two to their own devices.

  
     Somewhere, another year later there is Mirage and Old Cob, and I have my slight, tiny advantage of being Myth, and it is totally cancelled out when a Storm joins the team-up and uses a prism and wipes the floor with Grandfather Spider.

  
     And then in another year's time Medulla is released and I have become totally useless in hitting any of four bosses, and especially one in my own school. I try in the new Team-Up, and join the queue with others who need help, and they see I join, the timer starts ticking, and they pull up the box and check my school, and when it is a blue circle with a triangle staring back at them, they exit the queue and wait until I disappear too. So I put it off, out of mind and just forget until a year later and part two is announced. Then I wrap it up after six hours and four failed runs. And I do extra runs and take some chances. I test armor and different builds; I pick up Pigsie, I rework my training points to pick up Feint and maybe finally, finally I will be of some use to someone somewhere. I stitch ridiculous gear sets, my backpack is always full. The armors are hotkeyed, and I can be a secondary berserker with swim fins, a medium-build sword and shield wielder, a secondary tank in scraps of armor gathered from every farthest fathom of my twenty houses, or a secondary pumpkin-headed healer. I am not primary anything. I have no niche.

  
     When the Storm Titan finally releases, thundering down in the Test Realm only five days before advancing on the live realm, I watch videos and study, carefully note and try to plan the provisions.

  
     Then I am almost done with the world, and the weekend I am to finish the game (again), a guide comes out. A guide for fast, flawless Storm Titan runs. The team won't get wiped, won't spend two hours, the blades won't get rattled off.  
The team is a hitter, Storm or Fire; a Balance, to classically buff and never hit; a Jade Death, for Juju spamming, a technique that, now banned from the Arena, the devs forced to wobble out into the player versus environment world. The last piece is another Jade.

  
     A Jade who can heal, like a life. Or a Jade who can tank, like an Ice, or a Jade who can debuff or buff like another Balance, like another Fire, like another Death, like another Storm.

  
     The utility purposes of a Myth, the Shatter and Pierce and Vaporize, everyone just packs in a sideboard in gold cards.  
  
     You have no place here.

  
     Myth is the cretins, the unwanted, the lepers, the overlooked, the unloved.

**Author's Note:**

> Post-writing edit of-the-sorts:
> 
> 1\. I understand that the functional purpose of a Myth wizard in the Storm Titan battle has changed significantly now that the understood and widely-used strategy is the DoT hit. This was pre-test realm release when teams still did not know what they were doing.
> 
> 2\. Statistics from KingsIsle show that Storm, Death, and Fire are the top classes to play. Myth is the least popular class.
> 
> 3\. My sister leveled our oldest myth wizard through Khrysalis. I have the pleasure of leveling a second myth wizard through Khrysalis right now, and I have a better grasp of the strengths of the class, as well as when Myth became a viable hitting class in the game (Azteca).


End file.
